“Apple made waves in 2016 when it decided to get rid of the iPhone’s headphone jack, and again in 2017, when it announced the iPhone X would have a virtual home button,” Tonya Riley writes for CNBC. “Apple is reclaiming as much of the iPhone exterior as it can, so what could be next on the mechanical chopping block? That is becoming a more difficult question to answer: Apple is running out of iPhone surface real estate to repurpose.”

MacDailyNews Take: Beyond Jony’s inelegant kludge, of course.

“A small notch in the screen still exists in order for the company to pack in the phone’s top earpiece speaker and the camera and sensors needed for Apple’s Face ID, a feature that’s expected to soon expand to Apple’s other products including the iPad.. the almost bezel-less design initially faced some criticism from app and mobile designers,” Riley writes. “‘They’re running out of things to drop,’ said Gene Munster, a veteran tech analyst and managing partner at Loup Ventures.”

“With a company as secretive as Apple, it’s hard to tell how close to market the technology needed to make something like an all-screen device is,” Riley writes. “Patents filed by the company, dozens of which will never make it to market, hardly guarantee any future design plans.”

Design wise how about the iPad then, at the moment the Ipads are similar (albeit larger) then iPhones, will iPads carry on with the same current designs if iPhones gets curved or other radical designs?

Total agreement here. I think the beancounters at Apple are just buying whatever screens Samsung gives them, the designers at Apple haven’t shown any external innovation for years.

Apple has shown itself incapable of learning from mistakes. Apple leadership only counts unit sales as a measure of success, not usability or user delight. Not only was the loss of a phone jack a mistake, they also blew the location of the power button on several generations of iPhone — putting it directly opposite the volume button sucks. Both could have been easily avoided with a more ergonomic design with curved back for greater internal volume — see the 3GS.

The notch is arguably even more annoying to developers as it is to users who want to see full screen apps without the Ive notch kludge. Increased fragmentation of screen resolution and aspect ratio makes no sense.

Won’t all smartphones eventually have the same problem of running out of real estate to re-purpose? Does it even matter as long as consumers can still operate their smartphones without effort. Apple can still improve the iPhone’s internal hardware. I’d be most interested in a huge leap of battery life if it’s possible. I personally don’t see the need for this bezel-less craze, so I must be well out of the loop. If anything, I’d want a smartphone less vulnerable to damage from drops and if bezels help, then keep them.

Apple is developing a phone so thin – as thin as a piece of paper, as pliable, and unbreakable – so that it can be rolled up on a stick and stuck in your pocket. Make that two sticks such as when the King’s rep. read the king’s decrees in villages. And the iThin can still be scrollable. No internally moving parts. Yeah, baby! I can imagine that it will be released in ten years. Only Apple.

Hey, maybe Jony Ive could make them into a pair of elegant chopsticks. I bet that woould boost sales in China! Apple innovation at its most sparkling! Nobody else makes a smartphone that you can eat with!

t’s easy to make fun of Apple’s relentless pursuit of thinness. We tend to forget that the entire electronics industry has pursued miniaturisation for fifty years. The progression from lumbering mainframes to mobile computing devices is one example. Moore’s Law is another.